Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Today is David Archuleta's 20th birthday. I can't believe how fast time has gone by. Wasn't it just last year when the world heard a powerhouse 12 yr old belting out tunes on Star Search? Wasn't it just yesterday when we were all mesmerized by 16 yr old David auditioning for American Idol? Wow, time is really rolling by too fast.

In honor of David's birthday, I have written a new acrostic that I would like to share:

Happy Birthday David

Heart of gold exhibited through actions;Advocate for the downtrodden.Painter composing vivid scenes; Passionate words lovingly abound, Yearning to teach the world to care.

Brilliant star, shining for all to see;Imperfect, yet the epitome of perfection.Rare gem in a sea of ordinary, Tantalizing melodies emanate from his soul.Harbinger of many good things to come;Destiny bids him to transcend the average.Awe-inspiring values cause him to rise above the rest. Youthful zeal melds with sage counsel.

Devotion unparalleled, sets forth a shining example;Astute observations delivered to the world through wise eyes.Virtues, set to lofty heights, reach to teach us;Imagine the world if more conformed to these ideals.David, you inspire us!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

At this time of the year, everyone you talk to is worrying about what they are going to buy for their friends and family for Christmas. Every store you go into is trying to get you to buy everything under the sun, most of which is junk you don't need or stuff that will be broken before the end of January. I have to admit, I used to be like this also. When my kids were younger, I used to think that it was necessary for them to receive every toy that they wanted. They would have tons of gifts under the tree. I would get tons of stuff for my husband also. More was the word of the season.

This year is not going to be like that, it can't be. I have been forced to open my eyes, to see what a waste of time and money this flawed philosophy of buy, buy, buy really is. Money has not been as plentiful this year as it was in some years. Everything costs a lot more than it used to. The things that people in our family want are much more expensive than the bank account will support right now. So, I have decided that the members of my family will receive items that I have made myself, with my own hands, mind, and time. Some will receive food items, some crafted items, and some, well, a DVD with a slide show.

To me, this is the most precious gift, as it is the gift of incredible music combined with inspiring art work both of which are honoring the most incredible gift of all, the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas, and remember "Jesus is the Reason for the Season"
Margy

Friday, December 10, 2010

If, at the beginning of November, you would have told me that I would get to see David perform live two times in the span of one week, in the state of Texas, I would have told you that I have swamp land in the Permian Basin I want to talk to you about. David had not been to Texas in ... forever, except for that short visit to the Tejano Music Awards, so how could this actually be possible. My head is still spinning from all of this awesomeness, or it could be from the lack of sleep, or possibly caffeine and sugar needed to stay awake to write this.

I've already talked about the epic trip to Dallas last Friday, so today I will tell you about the mind-bogglingly hilarious trip to San Antonio to see the Kaleidoscope Skating Show with my two new friends from the Golden Archies, Judy and Kim.

Let me first say THANK YOU to these two incredible ladies for convincing me to go on this second trip. I would be hating life right now if I had missed this opportunity to see David again, especially since he was only an hour away from me in San Antonio. I don't like doing stuff by myself so I would not have gone to SA if they weren't going.

Both of these ladies live north of me so they picked me up on the way down to SA. This would turn out to be one amazing, laugh-filled trip with much bonding time and ODD overload. I haven't laughed so much and so hard in a long time.

So we made it to SA early and went by the Alamodome to see if anything was happening. Kim and I went to see if we could get into sound check since Kari and Melinda were tweeting about it. "NO." Boo. Hoo. But while we were standing inside the building planning our next move, we heard the announcer say blah, blah, blah, blah, David Archuleta, blah, blah, blah, but not David's voice. Boo again.

My new friends

We had a couple of hours to wait before the doors opened so we went to the Rivercenter Mall across the highway to kill time, chat, and plan the events after the show. We talked about our mutual admiration for David and how we could better promote him in our cities. (Or did we talk about our ODD? Hummmm!!!!) Anyway, we made plans to go to Mi Tierra Restaurant after the show and see if anyone important showed up there. It is a very popular mexican restaurant in downtown that is open 24 hrs. and I remembered that the last time David was in SA he ate there, so...

Thanks for inviting us

It was finally time to head over to the venue. Judy got us awesome seats, not too far from the stage but far enough out to see the skaters perfectly also. The set was done up beautifully, with twinkling lights and a holiday theme. We had to wait a little while so we spent time checking our cameras and tweeting people.

My tweet: Alamodome looks very sparkly tonight
and @DavidArchie isn't even on the stage yet.

Finally the announcer says it's almost time. Oh, we have an opening act. Skaters who move very, very slowly but do some very unusual moves.

The warm up act were a couple of clowns, literally.

First up, Gloria Gaynor sang I Will Survive ...

while Sasha Cohen skated.

Finally, we see David and the rest of the cast.

Co-hosts Dorothy Hamill and Scott Hamilton
from the big screen.

Skaters glide ...

and twirl ...

and jump ...

and dazzle ...

before we get to hear David performI'll Be Home For Christmas.

Sorry, I didn't make a video of that song.

And I was preoccupied and forgot to shoot

Paul Wylie skating to David's song. Sorry.

Then more skating …

Johnny Weir

Sasha Cohen

Sarah Hughes

Rena Inove and John Baldwin

Surya Bonaly

Someone had the bright idea to have David Kos stand
in the middle of the ice on a big snowflake and play ...

while Joannie Rochette skated around him.

David sings Falling Stars with a slight imperfection.

More skating ...

Kurt Browning

Kimmie Meissner

And singing ...

Gloria Gaynor sings again.

﻿

For the closing shots of the program all of the cast members come out to skate. ﻿

David is pretty good at this skating thing.

Johnny Weir thanks the crowd for their support while Scott Hamilton looks on.

Then co-host Scott Hamilton said it was time for retakes because "we're not perfect."

David's second take was perfection.

After the show finished taping at midnight, we decided to find out the exit the artists would be leaving the venue from ...

and when we got there we found a small group of fans
with the same idea that we had.

We had to wait for quite a while, and it was kind of cold, and late, and we were hungry because we didn't eat dinner since we were planning to stalk the restaurant for famous people. But we had a great time talking to the group of young ladies from the San Antonio area and the fans that we had met at other David concerts.

We decided to pass the time by tweeting Melinda ... and singing David's songs and Christmas carols.

We were going to sing Baby, It's Cold Outside but no one knew enough of the lyrics to lead.

While we were waiting for David, Kurt Browning dropped by on his way out

and happily gave all of us his autograph. Such a nice guy.

At 1 AM David was finally able to come by to see us on his way out of the venue. He was really sweet and signed autographs for all of us. He had to jump over a barrier that was in the way to get to us, but that didn't seem to bother him.

Monday, December 6, 2010

The following information was supposed to be published Thursday night but I forgot to hit the publish button so here it is now. (I'm not sure if the world is ready for this.) Tomorrow night, Dec. 3, 2010, David Archuleta will be performimg in Dallas at the Majestic Theater in a concert benefiting the Children's Medical Center. This is rumored to be a Christmas concert. This will be the first time since July 5, 2009 that David has performed in Texas, and then he was opening for Demi Lovato. (I'm not counting the two songs he performed at the Tejano Music awards in San Antonio several months ago.) This will be the first real full concert by David in the Lone Star State since March 2009, when he toured to promote his first album.

I am so excited to be attending this concert and, once again, I will be with my amazing daughter, Amanda. Our history with David is epic and very special to me. We are both fans, although I'm the more fanatic one. Maybe it's because I'm a mom and realize just how special David really is. Amanda is still young enough to be blinded by a guy's "charms" but I can see right through the mud and get to the core. Just like I can tell in an instant if either of my children are lying to me, I can tell by his actions and responses that David is not lying to us at all. What you see is what you get, a very genuine, humble, charming and exceedingly talented young man.

This will undoubtedly be another epic road trip to see David. Amanda and I are leaving early tomorrow morning and driving to Dallas, where neither of us have every driven before. (I know, I'm 53 yrs old and have never driven in Dallas, Tx but I've never needed to before.) Amanda is the daring one in the family and will probably drive most of the time. Besides, I'm the better navigator. Amanda has gotten lost driving to the middle of Austin, so I'll be doing the map reading for this trip.

Before the concert, we will be meeting some of the ladies from a fan site I frequent, Golden Archies, for an early dinner. After the concert, we are planning to meet up with an even larger group of "Archies" from the many different fan sites. I am looking forward to putting faces to some of the names that I see online all of the time. This should be awesome. What would really be awesome would be if David would show up at the after party. I seriously doubt that that will happen.

Well, I have to get finished with a couple of projects and start packing before everyone else gets home and I run out of time.

Look out Dallas! The "Archies" from Texas and several nearby "deprived states" are on the way and we plan to have a lot of fun. Oh, and there is this really special young man on the way there prepared to totally blow your socks off.)

The Totally Too Long Recap of the Totally Amazing Dallas Show

As you can tell from my previous post, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend David Archuleta's benefit concert in Dallas this past weekend. The concert, benefiting the Children's Hospital, was held on Friday, Dec.3, at the Majestic Theater. This concert was a blessing for me as I had become quite depressed over the fact that I was not going to be able to attend the concerts to be held in Salt Lake City Dec. 16 thru 19 when David is performing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It was unbelievable, that after several days of prayers asking God to make it possible for me to go to these performances, within an hour of my final decision that I could not financially attend the Utah performances, I learned that David would be coming to Texas for a concert. Dallas is within a reasonable driving distance of Austin and the concert was on a Friday, when my daughter did not have classes to attend, so we could go together. The lovely Texas ladies from the Golden Archies, a fan site that I have been frequenting, invited us to attend the concert with them. I had not met any of these ladies before this concert but I have to say that each and every one of the six ladies from Texas and Louisiana that I met in Dallas are amazing, first rate, wonderful people and David should be proud to have them as fans. They are all very devoted to spreading the word about an incredible young man who has touched their hearts. There is nothing weird or inappropriate about the "love" that these ladies have for David. He is in the same age group as their sons and grandsons and is considered by most to be an "adopted" member of the family. I myself, a 53 yr old wife and mother, have a daughter not far from 19 yrs old and a son 16 yrs old. It has been amazing for me to watch David grow and change just as it is amazing to see the growth of my own children.During the week leading up to the concert, Melinda, David's manager, announced that she was giving away Meet and Greet passes for the Friday concert. Of course I was having family time and missed the tweet. She later said that there might be more passes later in the week so I paid close attention to everything David for the next couple of days hoping to secure passes for Amanda and myself. Than the radio station sponsoring the concert announced that they were going to give away M&G's also. I signed up for their contest but never heard anything. Friday morning Amanda and I packed up her car and prepared to head to Dallas. I had seen on the GA's site that one of the ladies had won M&G from the station and was excited for her and the lady she chose to accompany her. They would be able to see David and tell him that the Golden Archies would be making a donation of 50 of his albums to the children's hospital in Salt Lake City when they attend the MoTab concerts. These were also the two ladies that had gone out of there way to arrange all of the plans for all us so I thought that it was only fitting that they should be able to meet David. I resigned myself to the fact that it was not my time to meet him.Amanda and I hit the road at 10 AM. At 10:30 AM I received a tweet from DavidFanKimbee from Golden Archies saying to call her. I thought she was probably checking what time we would be in Dallas or to tell me that the dinner plans were changing since our organizing members were now going to the M&G. I was totally shocked to find that she had just won four M&G passes and wanted to know if Amanda and I would be interested in going with her. UMMMMM, YESSSSSS. Needless to say, the drive to Dallas quickly became the journey from beyond. "Why are these people driving like this. Don't they know that I have to be in Dallas at 5PM to meet David. Get off of the road if you don't know how to drive." That was the longest 4 hour drive of my life. We finally made it into Dallas only to stop in the middle of the highway for half an hour because three of those terrible drivers decided to crash there cars together, and two fire trucks and two EMS units were needed to block off three of the four lanes of the highway to deal with them. Thanks guys.We made it to our hotel at 3PM and quickly changed into our concert attire. We didn't know what to expect from the traffic in downtown so we headed out at 4 PM for the Majestic. I had mapped out our every move on Google map on Thursday so that we would not get lost but a map from the hotel to the venue was not one of the choices since we were supposed to go to dinner first. I also underestimated how confusing Dallas roads are so, of course, we got lost. A nice gentleman doing valet parking at a restaurant somewhere in uptown Dallas finally got us pointed in the right direction and, by some small miracle, we found the parking garage and arrived at the venue at 4:50 PM.I was nervous for this meet and greet for two reasons: one, I am basically a very shy person and I had never personally met any of the people that we were going to be hanging out with and, two, I was going to meet David for the first time and wasn't sure how I would react. I do know that I can do anything that I set my mind to, especially if my daughter is there with me, so a figured that it was just going to be another one of our adventures and everything would turn out fine. I was correct.

I easily found the ladies that we were to meet since I knew what some of them look like from the web and we introduced ourselves. It's funny how at ease I was with this group of strangers. The common bond over David really does make you instant friends. We all chatted and met other fans from around Texas and other states who we had heard of from fan sites and twitter but had not met. Everyone was easy to talk to. As we all talked, I found out that one of the ladies in our group had contacted the radio station and secured meet and greet passes for the 2 members of the group that did not have them from a contest and that all 8 of us would get to see David. All of the others had met David on previous occasions but they were also nervous to see him so I didn't feel silly about my nerves.

Finally, we were lead into the foyer of the theater and told that since David was running late, there would only be time for group pictures and quick greetings, no autographs and no personal photos. We were a little sad but at least I was able to personally give him a card that I had made for him, shake his hand, and thank him for coming back to Texas. I have read so many reviews from different people who have meet David and their comments about how small he is in stature. I have to agree with them there. He might be short but there is a definitely something about him that makes him larger than life. It was so strange when suddenly everyone in the room knew that David had entered and was talking to a young lady in a wheelchair and her friends. To me, it seemed like you could feel his presence in the room even before you actually saw that he was there. It sounds weird to say that but that's what I felt. Something changed when he entered the room. Maybe it was him or maybe it was the vibes given off by the rest of the people in the room, I'm just not sure, but it was very interesting. When it was my turn to greet him, I was perfectly calm and collected and I remember exactly what I said. I wish that I could have said more but others were waiting. The time went really quickly and we were hustled back out of the venue to await the concert time.

Since we all had reserved seats and didn't have to worry about being the first in line again, our group all went over to a nearby hotel to get a snack and drink before the concert.

Time finally arrived for the concert. Amanda and I had box seats in the mezzanine which actually turned out to be great. We were able to see and hear perfectly and were not watched by security as closely as those on the floor. The show started with an unusual reading of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas performed by one of the radio station personalities.It took a little while for David to appear and some of the teens started chanting "David David." Finally his band appeared and started the music and then, there was David singing "Something 'Bout Love. He sounded great. I shot a few pictures to test the water for security. They only seemed to approach the silly people using flashes (useless from where we were) so I decided as long as I wasn't being a distraction to anyone else, I would get a few shots. Next David sang "The Other Side of Down" and then "A Little Too Not Over You" which all sounded great. For the 4th song, David moved over to the keyboard and I decided to try and shoot a video. It turned out to be my favorite song from the new album, My Kind of Perfect.

Ok, no one cared that I did that. Good. So I kept shooting videos and then Amanda shot some for me too.David was amazing as always. Some of the notes he hit during The First Noel and Pat -A-Pan were beyond stunning and the power and energy during Crush was fantastic. David has definitely grown as a performer since the two previous times that we have been privileged to see him.

I have a couple more videos on my channel if you want to watch them.

www.youtube.com/user/pandasmama

The concert was over too quickly. We met up with our group again and tried to decide what to do next. We had originally planned to met up with more fans who were going to the Hard Rock but decided at the last minute that a full meal somewhere a little quieter would be better for our group so we ventured off to find the restaurant where we had originally planned to met before the concert. This worked out much better for us although it would have been fun to meet more of David's fans. The parade the next morning was nice and fun (one of the wonderful ladies in our group procured bleacher seating for our group so that we would not have to fight the crowds) but we didn't get to hear David sing and he wasn't on the float that he was on at the beginning of the parade. At first, I was disappointed, especially when I didn't get any decent pictures of him as he passed by our location without stopping. As the parade ended at our location, I asked Amanda if she was up to sprinting to the ending location for the parade so I could try for good photos. She said yes and we bid farewell to our group and "high tailed it for the finish line." We got there with not much time to spare but found that there would be ample locations to shoot from, if I could only keep my composure and think about what I was doing. Well, the new location worked out nicely because David stopped at several points and I was able to calmly shoot more pics. YEAH!!!!

I wish that I had been able to meet more of the Texas fans that were at these events but there's always other chances, like the skating show this week in San Antonio. This time I'm going without Amanda but with a couple of the ladies that I met in Dallas. It should be another wonderful time. I have several new DFF's (David Fans Forever) to share my ODD with and I'm totally excited about the possibilities. Look out San Antonio, here we come.